What is an expatriate?

Usually definition 'expatriate' is understood as a person, who lives abroad away from his/her native country sent by his/her company. This term however, also includes people living abroad overall for example due to studies. Keeping that in mind we are talking about a whole lot of people all over the globe. And that is the context we will be talking in these pages to give little something to all of you who plan to move overseas or already have done the move. We have done it a couple of times so we can tell the stories and tips from our own experience.

Life as an expatriate

Expatriate life can be exciting, rewarding, amazing, surprising and thrilling at best. It can also be boring, lonely, annoying and even frightening. Usually it is something in between. You get to see new places and new faces, get to know some of those faces better and learn the person behind it, eat new and unfamiliar food, try to cope with foreing language on spoken and written level just to name a few. If you are sent by your employer your living costs (apartment, electricity, transportation in some cases etc.) are usually covered and you have something big and solid to lean against if something goes wrong (believe me, there will always be questions and things that got overlooked in initial planning phase). That being said, most of the things you can solve quite easily and they don't have major impact on your daily life, but for example health issues and especially costs can be quite problematic depending on your location. If you are not being sent overseas by your employer, you just need to do a bit more planning and footwork by yourself. We will be covering this topic as well.

What to expect

One thing you can be sure is that moving to a different country is an adventure, maybe not an epic one but an adventure nevertheless. Depending on your destination the change of the country and address might be the biggest change you will encounter, but changes in social network will always happen when you relocate yourself. Or, there is a good chance that your life might get completely changed. By this I do not mean only language and cultural barriers, different climates, challenges to get your everyday life to run as smoothly as it used to etc. The main change might be your way of thinking and seeing things and the world around you. And that is not a bad thing. That is one of the most precious things in life, to broaden your scope and give the tunnel vision a boot.

Also, the best side about going to a new place/s are all the beautiful new things that come with it. New country means new culture and new way of life. You will wake in the morning to a different sunshine you have used to, it might rotate counter-clockwise instead the clockwise you have got used to. People have different way of doing things and you get to explore and maybe adapt those, not to even mention the culinary surprises you most probably will encounter. Its time to forget the safe and well trodden path and explore something new, you might find quite many pleasant surprises you'll start cooking yourself (we've enjoyed mixing "new" and "old" way of cooking certain dishes, let the cook in you take lead and experience!). You will meet new people from different backgrounds and cultures, spend time with them and even might make some of them to be lifelong friends. That's something to think about, even if life can be challenging sometimes, it will come with great prizes!

When to go?

There really cannot be more personal question than this. It really is up to personal issues and general situation in life. For some people moving around is not a big deal at all while others do not want to go anywhere from the town they were born and have been living their whole lives and do not enjoy traveling at all. Some people will take the opportunity when it is available and decide to try it out while others enjoy peaceful and settled life. There are also those who want to spice up their regular life a bit and go for a little adventuring, let it be a work assignment, studying, language school or some other reason to go overseas. When the time feels right for you and your loved ones, then it is the right time to go.

For us it was pretty clear for along time what would happen and what we wanted to do. At the time we made our decision to go overseas we had been staying in the same town for 10 years already and had pretty much settled down. The town itself was quite small consisting of ~150.000 people so it was pretty quiet and had nothing much going on. Slowly the idea of moving away started stirring in our minds, cooked for a while and when the time was right, matured to a decision to pack our things and leave. The final decision was pretty quick really as we had both realized we wanted something else from life than to settle down yet and there was not appropriate schools available close by that could offer the course structure we wanted to study. It just happened to be, that in Sydney, Australia, there was an university offering exactly what we needed. So we packed our things and off we went.

What we have experienced since is priceless, the things we have done, the people met, the food eaten and the places seen. None of this would have not happened had we stayed at our old place and just continued onwards on our path. Our feelings have been ranging from absolute nirvana to the deepest depression and all the feelings in between. As we did not move to Australia as sent employees, but on our own to study and work, we faced rather steep challenges to get everything to run smoothly. For example finding a pleasant apartment in a city where there's more demand than supply, the task is quite a tough one but eventually we tackled it in a nice way: in the end there was abundance of offerings and we were able to pick the one we liked most. This alone made us stronger as human beings than we were before and really proved the old saying "when there is a will, there is a way" to be true. We have found qualities in ourselves that we knew never existed and would have most probably stayed hidden. All in all, including all the challenges we have met these years of expatriotism have been priceless and we would make the same decision to leave, any time.

It is not always a walk in a park

Yes, as the topic says, living abroad can be quite challenging at times. There will not be many familiar faces around you, your lifelong friends and relatives will not accompany you and join you in your destination, you might not understand a word what people speak around you, you might do stupid and sometimes humiliating mistakes due cultural differences, it is too hot, it is too cold, it is too rainy, the food you eat doesn't satisfy your culinary senses and it might even give you a diarrhea or bad case of stomach flu. The possibilities are countless and you are bound to encounter some difficulties. Let it be as trivial as trying to find the facial lotion you have used for years for example, some obstacles will be heading your way as well.

But even if it might be challenging at times, the sun will always shine eventually. There are not that many people who can experience the same things you are about to go through, so be sure to enjoy every moment of it!